Thanks for stopping by my Bicycle blog earlier today. Very nice post! We seem to have a lot in common; blogoholics, book lovers, Obama supporters, 7 year old drama queens (Mine enjoys Hannah Montana when she gets the chance, but she's mostly dramatic about saving animals and protecting the environment. We cannot throw anything away. :)). I'd like to add you to my blog rolls if that's alright.

The scary thing is that if a republican is in office next election, that number is sure to rise. And I agree, I am totally against the war, but with an uncle who flies a black hawk, I will always support the troops. Great Post!

One more point — most vets, and most war protesters, are pro-soldier but anti-war. The two ideas go together very naturally, and there are plenty of people who are anti-war who aren't unconditional pacifists. Given the importance of these issues and the rhetorical abuses of our leaders and pundits, these semantics are very important, I'd argue. Most vets and thoughtful citizens I know view war as a necessity at best, requiring a high threshold, and that it's a measure of last resort, not something to celebrate. Additionally, a mission may be bad, but the grunts are just doing their job. I know "pro-soldier, anti-war" is too radical a concept for Norah O'Donnell to get, since she consistently spoke of war protesters as anti-American (nevermind that dissent is profoundly American and one of the key rights the founding fathers fought for) but the "pro-soldier, anti-war" stance has been around in various terms for millennia. Meanwhile, our various imperialist chickenhawks are neither.